men.

I know I have a mighty heap of sins piled up at my own door; and it is because I cannot cart them away-because I have not strength to lay the heap level-because I need some mightier power than my own, and because I humbly hope I have in some degree found it that I ask you to apply to the same aid, and seek the same assistance, even that of a crucified Redeemer. Now, there are lots of men here, I daresay, who can swear a good round oath; who can tell a good big lie; and who think they have said rather a sinart and clever thing when they have damned the eyes of some pot companion, or mixed up the sacred name of God with some obscene or brutal joke. Now, I want to get such men to believe, NOW-what I know they will believe one day when it may be too late that every oath they take, every lie they utter, every cruel blow they strike, every drunken brawl they join, is a flaming brand with which the quenchless fires of hell are kindled, and with which he is lighting for himself a fiercer furnace than if he locked himself within his own dwelling, and set it in a blaze around him, and let his blackened ashes smoulder in its ruins. In short, I want to show to each man here his own heart as it is; and in doing so I desire also to look at my own as it is. Now, if you do not like to have your own heart held up to public view, I will hold up my own as a sample of the rest. In the first place, I find myself in health and strength; I find myself provided with food and raiment; I find myself living in a Christian land, free, if I please, to read my Bible, which points out to me my duty, and free to hear the Gospel preached if I choose to go. Now, I ask myself, who gives me my health and strength, who gave me my life, who preserves that life, who placed me in a Christian country? who, in short, gives me all I have, and makes me all I am? It is God, and. God only. What, then, has God a right to expect from me? That I should give Him the love and service of my heart, that I should learn and do His will, and that I should gladly own Him as my Lord and Father. Well! have I done this? Do the first affections of this heart of mine, whose pulses He sustains, and whose breath He inspires, leap upward to Him as to their natural centre, and their proper fountain-head? No! I am much fonder of the things of this world; I am too proud to acknowledge these blessings as coming from God, and my heart is full of enmity against Him. I am not too proud to take God's blessings, but too proud to thank Him for them; and I employ the life He gives me, and whose noblest powers He has a right to claim from me, in the service of the devil, and in sinning against

God. I go further still. When God calls to me, I will not listen. When the hand that has given me every good thing, and which might now hurl the thunderbolts of vengeance, and let loose the lightnings of wrath upon me, is stretched out in mercy, and is beckoning me back, I thrust it aside, and I still run madly to the paths of death. Justice grows impatient, and clamours for my blood. God still is pitiful, but justice must be satisfied. At length a volunteer presents himself to satisfy the claims of justice, and bids Him Jet His sword descend on Him and not upon me; He comes to earth; He meets the devil who has tempted me, and dyed my heart so red, and then He dies; is nailed by yelling crowds upon a cross, and as He gives up the ghost, He cries, "Father forgive him, for he knows not what he does." He puts up this prayer for me, and yet I go on sinning, still I am found at the public house, still drinking, cursing, swearing, never in the house of God, never on my knees at prayer, never lifting up my voice in a hymn of praise. I have a refuge to go to, but I laugh at it; I have a fountain to come to, but I trample underfoot the blood, and put my Saviour to an open shame. Now, my fellow-sinner, is not all this true of you? You can't deny it. Well, then, you must confess that your sins are as scarlet, and that your heart is red like crimson. Well, suppose it acknowledged, what is to be done? Why, we have a red heart; and on the one side of it a furnace of red flame, and on the other a fountain of red blood. The world, the flesh, and the devil, are trying heart and hand to pitchfork it into the fire; the Lord Himself is pointing to the open fountain, and exclaiming, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool,"

Now, if these words, addressed by God's prophet in His name, to those who had spurned His mercy and forgotten His love in prospective view of the Redeemer's sacrifice, 800 years before it had been offered, would apply to every sinner's cas then, so, surely, will the same words, taken up by His ministers in His name, and addressed to those who have lapsed from His ways, in retrospective view of that same sacrifice 1800 years after it had been presented, will apply to every sinner's case now.

Suffer me to ask those who are conscious of having ungratefully sinned against God, who are sometimes brought almost to the gates of despair, in thinking of their own transgressions, to take it as a truth that these words are adapted by God Himself to them now; and that just as the promise was given in reliance · upon the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, so shall that promise be fulfilled

in the case of every penitent who will accept it in dependence the same propitiation.

upon

It is well that we should be ashamed of sin; it is well that we should deeply humble ourselves because of it. But it is not well that we should be ashamed to seek pardon for it at the ever-open source of mercy. :

It may be that there is some conscience here burdened under a sense of sin and of unworthiness, haunted perhaps by the shame attendant upon some one act of evil which overshadows all the life, and casts its burden over all the spirit. When you go among your companions or your friends, you feel disposed to shun their glance and to avoid their fellowship; when you come and take your place among God's people in His house you feel like Judas at the supper-an interloper; and if the Master of Assemblies were to exclaim in reference to this congregation, "One of you is a devil," your remorseful conscience would acknowledge, "Lord, it is I." When in the social circle, you dread to mingle with its pleasure, as if you feared your fellowman could read your heart; when in solitude, you tremble at any intercourse with yourself, and shudder at the companionship of your own evil heart and your own accusing conscience. You feel almost disposed to call already on the rocks and mountains to fall upon you, and hide you from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne. Should this, or anything like it, be the condition of any mind present now, we would be the last to try to shake in any degree your sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. This is the state of mind in which a sinner ought to be; but it is not the state of mind in which he ought to remain. My friend, if the vision of your own guilt will haunt you like a phantom, and disturb your rest and harass all your thoughts, do not distrust the mercy of your Heavenly Father; fly to His Holy Word for counsel-read David's deep lament under his great sin: "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions." Read his light-hearted thanksgiving when he felt his prayer was answered: "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto Thee in a time when Thou mayest be found surely, in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him Thou art my hiding-place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble; Thou shalt compass me about with songs of

deliverance." And with these words, dropping and distilling like some heavenly dew upon your burdened spirit, fall upon your knees before the footstool of the heavenly grace; plead, in simple earnest accents, the blood of sprinkling; bring nothing but a broken and a contrite heart before the footstool of your Father; call up the memories of all His tender mercies; look straight to the cross, and all the Sinaitic thunders that have rent your spirit and disturbed your soul, shall be hushed in the whisper-"it is finished." The darkness which has brooded on your conscience shall roll back before the light that gleams from Calvary, and you shall find that your sins though as scarlet shall become as wool, and though red like crimson they shall be whiter than snow.

But there may be some here who are disposed to say, "all this is very easy after only a first or a second transgression, but I have sinned again and again, and broken resolutions solemnly repeated, time after time, how shall I dare approach again the God from whom I have so often receded?" It is, indeed, a solemn and an awful thing to find ourselves trifling and playing with the mercy and the love of God. It becomes us well to see to it that our penitence be sincere ere we again seek pardon at His hands. But, my fellow-sinner, remember it is your only resource, you have no where else that you can go, and if you do not go, there is nothing before you but a fearful looking-for of judgment. Would you actually reconcile yourself to dwell with everlasting burnings? Do you intend to make up your mind to inherit the blackness of darkness for ever? What! with all the precious invitations of the Spirit and the bride still ringing in your ears; with a long-suffering Saviour still stretching out His nail-pierced hands before you; with a fountain of mercy still standing open for uncleanness; with your attention still arrested by the "turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die," of a compassionate and sympathising God; will you, with such a tide of mercy still flowing in loving surges round about you, turn your back upon a Father's beneficence and a Saviour's tears; or hesitate to grasp the hand which will yet again rescue you from woe? "How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him-until seven times? I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven." O, don't measure the love and the mercy of God by that of man! But, however often you have gone astray, ask, as you have asked before, and you shall receive; seek as you have sought before, and you shall find, knock as you have knocked before, and the door shall be opened unto you.

There is one little word in this verse to which it becomes us to give strong and urgent emphasis. That word is "Now." "Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord." He does not care to stop to enumerate all your transgressions; He does not wait to ask Himself whether He has mercy enough to pardon all sin; He takes that for granted; He only asks you to come, and all He insists upon is that you should come now. "But," says the sinner, "it was but yesterday I perpetrated a dark and wicked deed; I sowed to the flesh what I ought to have sowed to the spirit; I sacrificed to Satan what I ought to have sacrificed to God; must I come now?" Aye, now, with the weight of your transgression full upon you; now, with the demon eyes of remorse leering on your conscience, and the grinning and derisive laugh of the hyæna spectre gloating on your guilt; now with the envenomed talons of despair tearing at the vitals of your spirit; now, with the fell remembrance chasing and hunting you here and there, and showing you the dismal darkness of a near damnation. "Come, NOW, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

"Let the

O, my fellow-sinner, be assured of it, "the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear." Let us reason together. Is it wise to reject for the sake of a passing indulgence, or for fear of a passing humiliation, such overtures as these: "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel ?" wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." I can imagine some one saying, you have often quoted these things before, can't you find something new to say? No. I can find nothing new, that is so much worth saying as this. Half our